WOMEN IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: HALFWAY UP FROM NOWHERE?

WOMEN IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: HALFWAY UP FROM NOWHERE?  Not quite.  Halfway?  Try 3 percent.  As late as 1997, there were no female CEOs in the Fortune 500.  Jill Barad at Mattel Toy was the first.

Women are, or are soon to be, over 50 percent of our nation’s workforce.  They are 50 percent of the middle managers.  Yet females make up only 8 percent of the corporate officers and 3 percent of the CEOs, despite constituting over 30 percent of the MBA and law graduates since the 1970s (40 percent since the 90s).

Why the disparity?  Undoubtedly a glass ceiling still allows women to see but not obtain jobs on the highest rungs on the corporate ladder.  Yet, whether it exists, or doesn’t, any ceiling is more permeable, with many cracks in it (18 million, according to Hillary Clinton, numbering the votes she received in the presidential primaries).

Today the trick for women who aspire to upward progress is to find out where the cracks might be:

            Go Where They Aren’t.  This is the twenty first century.  Fields that were not open to women even 20 years ago are today.  CEOs Susan Ivey (Reynolds America), Pat Woertz (Archer Midland Daniels), Paula Rosport Reynolds (ex-CEO of Safeco Insurance), Lynn Elsenhans (Sunoco), and Ellen Kullman (Dupont) spent most of their careers in, respectively, tobacco, oil and gas, public utilities, petroleum, and chemicals.  Beyond training in business and accounting, none of these women began their careers with specialized technical knowledge.

            Be Financially Literate.  Many women who have reached the very top have done so in sales, or marketing (one, Anne Mulcahy at Xerox, in human resources) rather than in “line” jobs, those with bottom line profit and loss responsibility.  Male CEOs and board members, in particular, emphasize the absolute necessity of line experience for women.  Line experience or not, a CEO will always have plentiful support in finance and accounting.  But as the careers especially of women CEOs whom corporate boards have ousted, such those of Jill Barad at Mattel or Carleton Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard, demonstrate, possession and application of some grounding is essential -- no matter what pathway led to the top or how much staff support one has.  No substitute exists for a basic familiarity with corporate finance, managerial accounting, and capital markets.

            Have Style.  The existing advice books, or most of them, are flat wrong when they suggest that women should act like their male counterparts (“lower your voice,” “take up golf,” “watch Monday Night Football”).  Aggressive or assertive behavior, imitating what they perceive many males do, may well derail a woman’s career, even if after a promotion or two.  The days of “shoulder pad feminism” and Armani pants suits are gone. In the ranks of upper management, corporations want executives, men or women, who represent their corporations well, anywhere and at any time.  Diplomacy, the ability to think strategically, and the ability to show a team oriented approach have supplanted the dated 1970s advice, if it was ever good anyway.

            Develop a Reputation as a Problem Solver.  At Avon Products, CEO Andrea Jung evolved a strategy to retain hundreds of thousands of loyal Avon reps despite the relegation of “Avon calling” home sales to the whip and buggy era.  Charged with masterminding methods for making use of Dupont’s products safer, Ellen Kullman had Dupont spawn an entire new division, Safety, that is Dupont’s largest today. While at Chevron, Pat Woertz oversaw completion, on time and under budget, of an oil pipeline from Northern Alberta to Northern California.

Despite statistics (3 percent) that show only a glimmer of progress, closer examination of the careers of 21 women who have actually become CEOs demonstrates that many more routes than used to, or that readily meet the eye, lead toward the corner office.  

Douglas M. Branson is the W. Edward Sell Chair in Law at the University of Pittsburgh.  His newest book, The Last Male Bastion - Gender and the CEO Suite at America’s Public Companies,” has been published by Routledge Press early in 2010.